Aokoye's Journey Through German (and other languages?)

[aokoye]

Tomorrow there's a German meetup that my professor invited me to. His wife, who is German, is the main organizer and I might try to be brave enough to go. He actually invited he and another friend of mine who also speaks German so I'm going to try to be brave enough to go. I am an introvert by nature but I suspect it won't be as anxiety making when I'm actually there.

I have a tutoring session in 45 min, this time in person. I have three more left until I leave I think. My tutor is, in my opinion way too nervous about my ability to pass the speaking part of the test. I think if the test were in a week then she'd be rightfully anxious and I think if I planned on not doing a bunch of preparation in Germany her anxiety would also be valid. That said, it's at the end of September, I'll be in German classes for four and a half hours a day/five days a week for four weeks for the first month that I'm there, and there will be all of one week in the middle that I'll be primarily speaking German - I'm visiting a friend in Brno for a week right after my class in Berlin before I take the train down to Vienna. Vienna will be a mix of English and German probably because there's a conference that I'm going to but outside of the conference it'll be all German.
I guess I appreciate her concern but I think it's overblown given the two months in German speaking countries right before TestDaF. I suspect today's tutoring session will also be a bit so-so because I am already tired. I didn't sleep well and on top of that I bike from my house to school (where my tutoring session will be). I suspect she'll receptive of that and not push me as much as she would otherwise which is good because being pushed when I'm tired gets me no where fast.

[aokoye]

My last in person tutoring session just ended and as stressful as they were I'm glad that I did them. I did 9 sessions over the course of four weeks and we might have another one on Monday. Half of those were over the phone and half were in person. Like I've said she's very experienced in tutoring people and I got very very lucky in finding her. She thinks that with everything I'll be doing in Berlin and Austria I should do well on TestDaF. Given the absurdity of the speaking part I don't think I'd be able to do well on it had I not worked with her. That said I'm also probably going to try to take TELC C1 - Hochschule.

As you can tell by reading this log we mainly worked on the speaking sections (all 7 of them...) and then we spent a tiny bit of time on the reading, listening, and writing sections. Those ones were more an issue of strategies and tips. What keywords I should write down, how to make the best use of my limited time, etc. I also did part of the written one this afternoon - I should have done it last night but I totally bonked on a ride and was less than able to focus on anything other than food when I got home. That said given how little time I spent on what I did write and given the nature of the corrections I'm fairly confident. She told me that overall it was pretty good. I'm also going to be required to write in a journal on a regular basis for my summer German intensive course and 300-350 word essay component as well. Speaking is really going to be the real issue and that's part of why I want to do the TELC test as well. I suspect that my course will prepare me for that better than it will the speaking parts of TestDaF, but we'll see.

[aokoye]

I went to stammtisch this evening and it was full of awesome! I got there nearly 20 min late because of traffic but there were only four of us and it ended up being fine. There was only one native speaker, Connie, the wife of the professor who invited me and she complimented me on my German. It was also nice seeing how much German my professor (ok he's not actually my professor as I haven't had a class with him yet - we're in a research group together though) spoke. It was also interesting because I essentially came directly from my tutoring session. I had about an hour and a half between the two of them and yeah, I was so much more relaxed at stammtisch even without the very weak hard cider that I had.

Needless to say, once I actually got there, everyone was really nice and I'm glad that it was a small group where I knew one of the people pretty well. It also gives me hope for Berlin and Austria because I didn't have many problems expressing what I wanted to say.

[aokoye]

I'm in Germany! Not Berlin yet, but I *am* in Germany. My flight out of Portland is was late flying out and there were thunderstorms in Frankfurt which meant that we were in a holding pattern for a while. That meant that I missed my flight to Berlin and, because there were no more flights with spots left on them on the 20th, they (Condor) offered to put me on a train so I would be able to get there sooner. That said, I'm still getting to berlin at around 1am but it means no sleeping in Frankfurt's airport and I love trains and HATE flying. This is also why I booked my flight a few days early - to avoid panicing if something were to go wrong.

Right now I'm on my iPad on an ICE to Berlin. I used more English than I expected today due to the plane stuff and my never having been on an ICE, *but* I asked for directions to the train station at the airport in German and asked clarifiying questions in German. The person I spoke to at the airport seemed so pleased to be dealing with someone who wasn't panicing and seemed calm. I've had no problem understanding messages in German for the most part. The only exception was some of the announcements at the train station but I also couldn't understand the English ones...
Tomorrow I'm getting a new phone which is also going to serve as my new phone when I go back to the states. It turns out the one I want is cheaper without a contract here than it is without a contract in the US. Given that my next new phone for the US needs to be without a 2 year contract it just makes sense to get one in Germany to use here and in the US (obviously with a different sim in the US). I'm also really glad that I got a rechargeable battery pack from amazon as it has come in serious handy today.

[zenmonkey]

Welcome to Germany! Enjoy Berlin.

[aokoye]

Welcome to Germany! Enjoy Berlin.

Thanks! I just got to my hotel about an hour and 20 min ago and am attempting to wind down after a very long day and a half. The whole thing is still really crazy as this seemed like such a pipe dream for a number of reasons and yet here I am, in my hotel room in Berlin watching N24 really quietly in an attempt not to wake up the people in the room next to me (though I just realized that there isn't a room on the other side of the wall that the TV is on so I don't feel so bad).

I'm glad I decided to just take a taxi to the hotel because while I'm very good at public transportation networks that are new to me, I don't like figuring out busses at night - even if i was in a city where the primary language was English I wouldn't want to do that. I did navigate the hotel stuff in German (checking in and such) and I have a feeling most if not all of the cell phone stuff tomorrow will also be in German with an extra, "so really this needs to be unlocked" (it looks like Saturn has unlocked phones otherwise I'd just go to Deutsche Telekom). I do have one day of global roaming from my US carrier which I put to good use between google maps and needing to call my bank in the US to make sure that my debit card wouldn't be flagged. Note, I went into a branch last week to get this dealt with but wanted to double check - I'm glad I did because apparently the person I originally spoke to didn't put the fraud protection stuff on hold. This is why I double check things like that.

[aokoye]

This will be a quick post and none of it will be in German because I should already be asleep.

To follow up from my last post - I finally figured out the sim card thing. Thank you Lidl for allowing people from a good chunk of non EU/EEA countries to register their sim card with just a passport.
I met my host "family" and they're fantastic! It's a woman my mom's age, her son who is in his early 20s, another guy who is in his 20s or 30s and then there's a third person who is apparently never around. They are all thrilled that I speak German because all of the other people they've hosted only spoke English. Also the mom and her son, Gregor, are both musicians and Gregor and I spent about an hour listening to classical music this afternoon. It was fantastic!

While everyone who lives here speaks English, they prefer speaking with me in German which is great. Gregor is totally in the habit of speaking with people they host in English but he's getting better about sticking with German when talking to me (I think he also just really loves speaking English and does so with his German friends as well). That said, he's given me permission to be really direct and tell him to quit speaking English, which I've done. His mom also told him to stop speaking English with me

My ability to understand spoken German is shockingly good. It's only going to improve over the four weeks that I'm here as well. One of the people who lives here speaks realllly fast so it's a bit hard for me to keep up, but I think that's a good thing. It will force me to improve in order to understand him. My spoken German is also going to improve. Both Gregor and his mom correct me when I make chronic mistakes (today's big one was "Ich bin interessiert an..." vs. "Das ist interessant.") and also when I'm saying something that is really complex structurally and I mess it up.

What's also cool is that I'm not consciously translating anything in my head. There are also times when I think back to something that I talked about and I don't know if the conversation was in English or in German which is cool but also logical I think.
Tomorrow is my spoken test and then in the afternoon I find out what level I'll be in. Fingers crossed it's C1. Wednesday morning I need to register for TestDaF. Unfortunately the registration opens at 9am and that is when my class starts.

[tarvos]

Viel Glück. Ich drücke dir die Daumen. Nja, eigentlich viel Erfolg.

[aokoye]

I got into the C1 class!!!!!!
I totally got wound up for nothing. They were running about half an hour late with the tests which was frustrating but the two people who interviewed me were really nice. It was odd beforehand because it wasn't very clear how they were organizing people. It clearly wasn't by last name and it didn't appear to be via difficulty either. A bunch of us were unclear (and worried) as to whether or not it was going to be a group interview. It turned out it was just two professors/teachers and one student. My interview essentially consisted of them asking me to tell them about myself, how long I had studied German, and what I wanted to get out of the course. Needless to say I'm glad that I spent all of the past two days chatting in German!

After the interview I had to wait four long hours before the results were supposed to be given to us. I say that as opposed to, "wait four hours to be given the results" because they were running late (computer issues) and then when they finally started the started with semi-intensiv A1-C1 and then moved on to intensiv in the same A1-C1 order (a handful of the people who tested for A2 ended up in A1) by the time I found out what level I was in it must have been 2:50. The placement test results thing was supposed to start at 2:15. I will say, it was kind of funny because I wasn't sure if there would be multiple intensive B2 courses (there are two or three semi intensive ones), so I looked around and was like, "oh there are only 7 of us left in this lecture hall..."

We ended up writing a short thing about music in the last 10 min of what ended up being 27 minutes of class (the whole day was taking up with placement test stuff). That was our last "placement test" as it were but I don't think anyone is going to be leaving our class for B2.

After class I attempted to find a store that carries one of the pens I want (I really want a Lamy Safari ballpoint because they're good enough that I generally like how the write more than their Lamy Safari fountain pens) but I got totally turned around multiple times. I found a bookstore in the process so I bought the TELC C1 Hochschule book. I haven't gotten a chance to look at it yet so I'll save any potential reviews for later.
And with that I'm going to go lay down because I got all of two and a half hours of sleep last night.

[schlaraffenland]

I got into the C1 class!!!!!!

After class I attempted to find a store that carries one of the pens I want (I really want a Lamy Safari ballpoint because they're good enough that I generally like how the write more than their Lamy Safari fountain pens) but I got totally turned around multiple times.

Congrats! That's awesome news! Hope you have lots of fun in the coming weeks.

And yay for Lamy, my fountain pen gateway drug. What color/finish are you thinking about for the Safari ballpoint?